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Guess the Villain Game - from RefreshFriday

It's Cox. I sat in on a multi-dealer presentation that was sketchy for sure. We were all lured to the event to see a speaker that we wanted to see, but had to sit through a different presentation first (aka timeshare). We give them access to our DMS and they match other data sets up that are mostly anonymous. The promise is a dashboard and intelligence that will give us strategic insight. When the presenter dropped the catch, I quickly looked around the room to only see a few dealers comprehend the absurdity of it all. You see, the dashboard and insight is free if you give them access to your DMS. Oh, and they now get the last piece to the puzzle...freely given sales and customer data with the right to repurpose it. The presenter told a story about some app that his wife downloaded for free that helped them share newborn / infant moments. His story was about how you should never give up your data for something free. Somehow he didn't understand in his own presentation that he was proposing the same thing. #duh
 
Hello All,
Just waiting on three separate dealers who've contracted this "guaranteed" product from a conquest provider to give their approval to post what we've found. Once we have permission from the dealers involved (like we did with the SpinCar post) we will provide all the details. In the interim while everyone is patiently waiting I will post the backstory coupled with what exactly took place later this eve.
 
I'm confused on how a provider knowing what works best for its clients can be considered a villain. Wouldn't you prefer to work with someone that can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't work?

What if they were able to tell you the $10,000/month in ads your putting are generating sales or not? A media is good for you or not?

...or would you rather stick with your account manager chatting about bounce rate and impressions?

Truth is, relying on dealerships for true and exact data is a challenge. Many of you here know how to pull data in a clean and consistent fashion, buy most dealers are confused when it comes to digital believe me.

We've seen horror stories in the past with data, that I don't side with, but have you ever thought about how many people can grab a dealership's data an run?

Done right this is very powerful and I don't think it should be considered a bad thing.
 
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I'm confused on how a provider knowing what works best for its clients can be considered a villain. Wouldn't you prefer to work with someone that can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't work?
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Done right this is very powerful and I don't think it should be considered a bad thing.

I think you're missing some context. The "accusation" here is that they're taking credit for sales they did not make.
Jeffrey's team injected fake sales into the DMS, only to have this vendor claim that those sales should be attributed to their marketing.
 
Oh, well I did miss context

In this case we all agree. This is straight up taking dealers for fools...

As a provider, you should know the attribution is not always perfect and must be willing to admit you didn't help generate a sale, but helped influence it. It should be a common understanding between you and your vendors this concept exists.

There's a big difference between a deal source and influence...

The ultimate attribution goes to the pen used to sign the deal, otherwise there's no deal
 
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160509.profitability.jpg
 
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What's throwing a monkey wrench into this for me @Alex Snyder is access to the CRM data. A few third partys that come to mind for me is...
A. CDK (not really sure about their conquest marketing though. I stayed away from those mofo's after they said they charge a 40% admin fee for their marketing program with a straight face.)
B. Adperance (has access to both DMS and CRM data points)
C. Ford Direct (has access to every data point in the entire store)
D. Naked Lime (will try and take credit for any and every sale even if the customer flew in from another country!!)
E. Edmunds (possible long shot here but actively try's extremely hard to gain access to both data points if they don't have it)
 
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I'm confused on how a provider knowing what works best for its clients can be considered a villain. Wouldn't you prefer to work with someone that can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't work?

What if they were able to tell you the $10,000/month in ads your putting are generating sales or not? A media is good for you or not?

...or would you rather stick with your account manager chatting about bounce rate and impressions?

Truth is, relying on dealerships for true and exact data is a challenge. Many of you here know how to pull data in a clean and consistent fashion, buy most dealers are confused when it comes to digital believe me.

We've seen horror stories in the past with data, that I don't side with, but have you ever thought about how many people can grab a dealership's data an run?

Done right this is very powerful and I don't think it should be considered a bad thing.
I agree with much of this, but a lot of attribution companies promise the world. Actually... a lot of automotive vendors and agencies of all types promise the world, as if there is some shiny red button to push and we all know that's BS. I think it's a matter of expectations. IMO, the majority of the time a dealer's expectations are set incorrectly and then hell breaks loose. Massive churn / attrition rates and unhappy customers. That's what I've seen.
 
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